Average homeowners, and even semi-skilled construction workers, find conventional railing systems nearly impossible to install. Specialized installation knowledge and the present need for a variety of fittings have made standardization prohibitively expensive and mass marketing infeasible. These problems are compounded when in railings installations on staircases such as, for example, on decks where electrical lighting is also desirable. There are too many variables to make existing systems easy to install, as there are a wide variety of fittings from which selections can be made, some of which require further modification to allow them to be used. Presently, the scope of installations on stairs requires considerable knowledge, far beyond that of the average homeowner or general contractor.
There is a well-established general trend and desire for homes and commercial structures to be largely maintenance free. This has spurred the use of recycled plastic, PVC and other materials in decking and other residential and commercial building projects. Accordingly, an objective of the present invention is to introduce maintenance-free deck lighting and railing systems that can be successfully installed by a novice using simple tools.
Miniature illumination lighting devices have historically used incandescent or halogen bulbs. These types of lighting systems are relatively inefficient. A substantial amount of energy is lost generating heat as a byproduct. Another disadvantage of these types of systems is the relatively short life span of the lighting bulbs. Consequently, these lighting systems result in high operational and maintenance costs. The problems associated with past miniature illumination systems have, in part, been solved by illumination devices of the type disclosed in commonly-assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/755,516, entitled “Super Bright LED Utility And Emergency Light.”
There remain problems relating to the costs and adaptability of light emitting diodes (LED's) to electricity supply lines in structures such as, for example, new and existing railing systems. Thus, another objective of the present invention is to provide versatile, adaptable, inexpensive lighting systems employing miniature light sources, such as, for example, LED's that are easy to install in such systems.